Communications of an eUICC may be authenticated using PKI techniques. An eUICC is in a class of devices or components known as secure elements (SEs). The expressions eUICC, UICC, and SE are used interchangeably herein throughout. Certificates used for authentication and confidentiality purposes can be generated by a trusted certificate issuer (CI or root CA). A public-key certificate may also be referred to herein simply as a certificate.
A user may store a copy of a certificate, where the certificate holds the name of a given party (user identity). The public key recorded in the certificate can be used to check the signature on a message signed using a PKI private key of the given party. A user or message recipient may use an on-line protocol such as on-line certificate status protocol (OCSP) to determine if a certificate is valid.
A digital signature is authentication data that binds the identity of the signer to a data part of a signed message. A certification authority (CA) is a trusted third party whose signature on a certificate vouches for the authenticity of the public key of the associated user identity. If the private key of the identified user becomes compromised, all holders of the certificate need to be notified. Notification can be done, for example, with a certificate revocation list (CRL). Recipients of the CRL no longer trust messages signed with the revoked public key of the identified user. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) request for comments (RFC) 5280 provides an example of a CRL. For example, RFC 5280 describes a CRL for use in a PKI environment known as X.509.
Also, a public-key certificate may expire at a certain point in time. So, separate from the compromise issue, there is a need to improve recognition of expired certificates. Generally, time-variant parameters can be used in identification protocols to counteract replay attacks and to provide timeliness guarantees.
An eUICC can host profiles. A profile is a combination of operator data and applications provisioned on an eUICC in a device for the purposes of providing services by an operator. The device communicates with the eUICC over an interface. The interface can be an ISO/IEC 7816 interface. A profile can contain one or more secure data used to prove identity. An eSIM is an electronic subscriber identity module and is an example of a profile.
An eUICC includes an operating system, and the operating system can include ability to provide authentication algorithms to network access applications associated with a given operator. The operating system also can include the ability to translate profile package data into an installed profile using a specific internal format of the eUICC. A controlling authority security domain (CASD) may also be referred to as a “key store” herein. An eUICC CASE (ECASD) provides secure storage of credentials required to support the security domains on the eUICC. For example, private keys of an eUICC may be stored in the ECASD.
Some activities related to an eUICC resident in a device may be performed by the device. Examples of such activities are profile download assistance and local user interface functions. More information on profile download assistance and local user interface functions can be found in “RSP Architecture,” Version 1.0, Dec. 23, 2015, Official Document SGP.21, published by the GSM Association.